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"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague." -Cicero

Embracing the Obvious Truth

It isn’t hard to understand the truth about Israel and Hamas.Four-year-old Daniel Tragerman was murdered on Friday afternoon in his home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz by Hamas terrorists.

They
shot him with a mortar launched from a school in Gaza’s Zeitoun
neighborhood. At the time of the launch, the school was filled with
civilians who had fled to the school for shelter.

They fled to the school for shelter because they were forced to vacate their homes.

They
were forced to vacate their homes because Hamas terrorists were
launching mortars and rockets at Israeli civilian sites, like Daniel
Tragerman’s home, from their apartment buildings.

The
moral and ideological divide between Israel and Hamas is so
self-evident that the only way to ignore it is by embracing and
cultivating ignorance.

This
week Richard Behar published an in-depth investigative report in Forbes
documenting how the US media is doing just that. As Behar demonstrated,
the media is collaborating with Hamas in its war against Israel.

Behar
cited example after example of how the US media, led by The New York
Times have systematically ignored, obfuscated and downplayed Hamas’s war
crimes while swallowing whole its bogus statistics and accusations
against Israel.

The
greatest threat to faux reporters like the New York Times Israel bureau
chief Jodi Rudoren and her colleagues are people who refuse to accept
their distortions and insist that the truth be told.

The most dangerous of the truth tellers are the non- Jews who stand up for Israel.

This
week, former British Labour MP Denis MacShane published an op-ed in
Haaretz where he spoke to this point. MacShane argued that for Israel to
win the information war being waged against it must cultivate
non-Jewish defenders.

In
his words, “The British media… is awash with defenders of Hamas and
Palestinian resistance. Hardly any are Muslims. In contrast, the
prominent journalists – Jonathan Freedland, Daniel Finkelstein, Melanie
Phillips, David Aaronovich – who support Israel are, well, Jews.”

MacShane argued that because they are Jews, readers dismiss them.

They “shrug their shoulders and think privately: ‘They would say that, wouldn’t they.”

Israel
has an enormous reserve of support among non-Jews. But due to the
mainstream media’s commitment to dishonesty and deliberate cultivation
of public ignorance and moral blindness in their coverage of Israel, for
many, the price of defending Israel is becoming prohibitive.

Israel’s enemies in the West do their best to reinforce this perception.

Consider the case of Jon Voight.

The
celebrated Oscar-winning actor is an outspoken champion of Israel.
Earlier this month, Voight published an open letter to Penelope Cruz and
Javier Bardem in Variety where he harshly criticized the Spanish
performers for their public statement condemning Israel and siding with
Hamas in its war against the Jewish state.

In
his words, “I am heartsick that people like Penelope Cruz and Javier
Bardem could incite anti-Semitism all over the world and are oblivious
to the damage they have caused.”

Voight was viciously attacked for speaking out.

Last
week, two UCLA professors, Mark LeVine and Gil Hochberg, co-authored an
article published in The Huffington Post assaulting him for his views
and his temerity to suggest that Israel is a moral, embattled democracy
fighting genocidal forces committed to its destruction.

The two Jewish academics are supporters of the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

The
principal aim of the BDS movement is to make it socially unacceptable
to support Israel. In 2010 LeVine and Hochberg signed a petition calling
for California state universities to divest from companies that do
business with Israel.

Online
Hollywood commentators, such as Deadline’s Nellie Andreeva, opined that
Voight, who was nominated for an Emmy Award for his role in Showtime’s
Ray Donovan series, was liable to lose his Emmy bid due to his support
for Israel.

Hochberg
and LeVine’s assault on Voight was a long-winded voyage into the
post-Zionist and anti-Zionist literary moonscape. Their principal
criticism of Voight was that he refuses to accept this intellectual
wasteland’s rejection of the known facts of history.

Voight
is not an academic, nor has he ever claimed to be an expert on Middle
Eastern history. He is a non-Jewish American concerned about the future
of America.

That
is why he stands with Israel. Voight recognizes that when Israel is
under assault, and its right to defend itself is denied while terrorists
are supported, the US is endangered. And so he feels compelled to speak
out, regardless of the price.

In
his response to the threats to deny him the Emmy due to his support for
Israel Voight told USA Today, “I’m not speaking to get awards. I’m
speaking because I’m concerned about my grandchildren and the life
they’re going to live, and the country they’re coming in to. I want to
protect them.”

Another
non-Jewish champion of Israel is former US senator and Republican
presidential hopeful Rick Santorum. Both during his tenure in the Senate
and since, Santorum has spoken out strongly against Iran’s nuclear
program, insisting that it is a serious threat not only to Israel, but
to the US itself.

Like Voight, Santorum recognizes that the fate of the US is directly tied to the fate of Israel.

For
his trenchant support for Israel, and his outspoken concern about
Iran’s nuclear program, as well as his support for domestic issues where
he has not shied away from taking controversial, inconvenient position,
Santorum’s critics have demonized him.

But undaunted, he continues to speak out.

Last
week, Santorum led a solidarity mission to Israel. The majority of his
colleagues were non-Jewish opinion shapers from Iowa, the first state to
hold Republican presidential contests. Santorum explained that his goal
in coming to Israel was not simply to show Israelis that the American
people support us. It was to build support among Republicans in Iowa for
a robust US engagement in foreign affairs based on supporting Israel,
fighting America’s enemies and preventing the forces of hatred, like
Hamas and Iran, from expanding their power.

Santorum’s
chief concern is that weary of foreign policy failures, more and more
Republicans are embracing the isolationism most identified with Senator
Rand Paul. Paul is currently polling well in Iowa.

Over
the weekend Paul referred to Hillary Clinton as “a war hawk,” and said,
“I think the American public is coming more and more to where I am.”

Santorum
is convinced that if Iowans are educated about the nature of the
threats emanating from the region, and of Israel’s singular contribution
to the cause of freedom and stability, their position can become the
basis for a Republican foreign policy that rejects isolationism and
embraces US leadership in world affairs as the only way to secure the US
and strengthen its embattled allies.

In
other words, like Voight, Santorum’s support for Israel is rooted in
his concern about America, and its future. Like Voight, Santorum
recognizes that the growing penchant among elite opinion shapers to
ignore truth in the pursuit of moral relativism and fake sophistication
or isolationism constitutes a danger to America.

This
week the New York Times descended to yet another low, reporting as fact
totally unsubstantiated accusations by the son of a senior Hamas
terrorist that Israel tortured him and used him as a human shield during
a brief incarceration.

But it appears that the jig may be winding down.

More and more people are following the lead of men like Voight and Santorum, and insisting that the truth be told.

This week more than 190 Hollywood luminaries followed Voight’s courageous lead and signed a public statement condemning Hamas.

Quin
Hillyer, a reporter for National Review who accompanied Santorum on his
mission, wrote Monday, “My visit to Israel last week confirmed that
Iran and its fellow jihadists have good reason to see Israel and the
United States in the same light. Israelis and Americans share the same
humane, Western values…

“Israel
is an oasis in a desert – in the physical, topographical sense but also
metaphorically. It’s an oasis of reason, human decency and justice
appropriately grounded in mercy.”

MacShane
is right. It is vital for more non-Jews, who refuse to deny the truth
that screams out to be told, to stand up to the lies and publicly stand
with Israel. It is the job of Israel and Jewish communities throughout
the world to empower them by among other things, reducing the power of
Israel’s enemies to make them pay a price for their decency.